Computers have become increasingly commonplace and increasingly interconnected, such as by the Internet and the use of electronic mail (email). Unfortunately, such increased interconnectivity has resulted in increased attacks against computers by malicious users. During such attacks, malicious users oftentimes try to introduce malicious programs on to other users' computers (e.g., designed to disable the other users' computers, obtain information from the other users' computers, launch attacks against still other computers, and so forth), attempt to disable a computer so that its performance is greatly impaired (e.g., by bombarding the computer with requests), and so forth. From the perspective of the user of the attacked computer, these attacks can range from being annoying to devastating, potentially resulting in the computer being inoperable or confidential information being copied from the computer.
In order to combat these attacks, security services that run on a computer have been created to protect that computer from attack. Examples of such security services include antivirus programs and firewall programs. One aspect of these security services is that they typically need to be updated regularly in order to be able to protect against the latest attacks.
However, one problem that can exist when updating security services is that the capabilities of the services may be hindered during the updating process. As such, the computer can face an increased vulnerability to attack when being updated. Thus, it would be beneficial to have a way to reduce the vulnerability of computers during the updating of the security services on the computer.